Watch Your Dreams Like Falling Stars
by Rainbow Stevie
Summary: Fifteen small truths in the lives of the team, woven around the framework of Grissom & Sara’s relationship.


Summary: Fifteen small truths in the lives of the CSIs, woven around the framework of Grissom & Sara's relationship.

Double Disclaimer: Not only are all of these characters under the ownership of various people under the CBS logo, including but not limited to Anthony E. Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn, and other creators of CSI, all of my so-called truths are technically truthful only in my mind, and neither verified nor endorsed by any of the aforementioned people. Actually, this is a double double disclaimer, as a) point #12 was inspired by a friend, Janus, and b) the title is borrowed from a Kendall Payne song, "I Will Show You Love"

Author's Notes: This started out last spring as one of those Personal Canon memes (with a dash of Crack Fic meme), and then expanded itself. I'm going for a sort of poetic angle – have you ever seen one of those stanza-less poems made up of seemingly disconnected sentences? Yeah. These don't necessarily relate to each other, but they fit a theme. Spoilers through season 7.

[2012 edit: replaced roman numerals with line breaks, as is on the warpath lately with removing stuff. No other changes made.]

* * *

**Watch Your Dreams Like Falling Stars**

As a general rule, Sara does not address him as Gil. "Gil" is reserved for Brass and Catherine, friends who've known him forever and can tease him with in-jokes sprung from too many years working together. She fell in love with Grissom, and the way she says it carries its own particular intimacy. Contrary to popular belief, this is possible; after all, Scully never called Mulder "Fox."

* * *

Catherine used to be able to take comfort from watching her daughter sleep, standing protectively in the doorway. She blinked and Lindsey was a teenager, quick to wake at the slightest footstep and pronounce this practice "creepy," so lately Catherine spends her reflection time with photographs. There are fewer in the album than she remembers taking, and she always resolves to make better use of the camera, but when New Year's rolls around they still don't need a new book.

* * *

If Grissom just hadn't held her hand, Sara might have been more open to Greg's advances that year.

* * *

Hodges keeps an office blog. No one else is actually aware of its existence, but he fancies himself quite the entertainer and frequently reads over his own witticisms about the inner workings of the lab, confident that his efforts are followed by a vast contingency of lurkers.

* * *

There is a time, one summer, when Sara really does leave. She calls it vacation, a glorious four weeks of it (Greg marvels about her ability to bankroll, in a tone that sounds suspiciously like a jealous whine), but the whole time she has resignation papers clutched in her hand. It would be so easy to sever ties from a distance, so easy, now that she's left, to stay gone…

* * *

Warrick doesn't get drunk very often, but when he does, it never ends well. He's not a violent drunk but a bitter one, where everything he doesn't say, all the daily grievances and frustrations, come out in a burst of temper that cuts deeper than anyone wants to admit. He's lost more than a few friends this way. It's a miracle that Nick isn't yet one of them.

* * *

On the opposite coast, Sara starts a summer affair with a man named James, who charms her into bed because he wasn't trying to, and cooks her breakfast even though they barely know one another. He captures romance like an art form, in armor so shining it hurts - and back to Grissom she goes, Grissom who only gives her a nod and a crime scene to keep her hope alive.

* * *

Nick always assumed he'd be married by 30, with a house and a fenced yard, a kid or two and a Golden Retriever. He's not quite sure how that plan got derailed, but hasn't given up on the American Dream, even if he has to leave Vegas to find it. That second option has been surfacing in his thoughts more and more often lately. It is not a midlife crisis, no matter what Warrick says.

* * *

The day after Lurie walked, Grissom took down his butterfly display case and locked it away in storage, where the iridescent wings of its inhabitants kept company with darkness and dust for three years. It's both fitting and unsettling that Sara would be the one to restore its position, although less of the latter every time she passes it with that bemused smile.

* * *

Greg has contemplated suicide twice this year. The first time was sharp and reactionary, after an error and contaminated evidence followed by a missed date and the realization that he hadn't laughed in six weeks. The second was on the night he realized that guilt never gets fully erased, only grinds itself in with ever finer shards until it's too deeply embedded to ever separate out again.

* * *

Grissom asks her out, if not precisely the way she expected him to, then at least _when_ she expects him to. Nick isn't even back at work when the question comes, soft and hesitant, and her tongue says yes too quickly.

* * *

Brass harbors a particular distaste for Lady Heather not because of her attitude or even the nature of her business itself, but because it strikes a too-familiar chord with him. In her cool, catlike eyes he sees Ellie twenty years from now, and no matter how irrational the thought process, he can't shake its chill.

* * *

Sara still keeps her own apartment, but home is more often than not Grissom's townhouse. She's the one who convinced him they should get a dog, despite his initial resistance, but said dog has since attached himself to Grissom's side. This doesn't irk her as much as it used to, although she thinks a little more loyalty now and again would be nice.

* * *

Waking up next to his wife sometimes feels like part of a dream to David, but even that isn't as surreal as looking around at his single coworkers, and the crumbled or crumbling marriages, to realize that he and Doc Robbins have some of the most stable personal lives in the building. He thinks it's strange, and a little bit sad, that those who work most closely with death find it easiest to leave behind at the end of the night.

* * *

Sara accepted Grissom's first overture knowing he wouldn't live up to her expectations, but that didn't stop her from growing frustrated over his inadequacies. They had a rocky start and almost didn't get off the ground, but something like stubbornness got them past their initial issues. And though they haven't said it in so many words, by now they both think this might be permanent.

-end-


End file.
